Scafell Pike.

All week this is the one peak that I have been nervous about. We where not doing the usual approach from the south, we where doing the east to west approach the longest route we had planned.

As we set off the weather was playing us as it has all week, light rain moments of brightness hinting that it may even sunshine. Then the clouds close in and you guessed it it started raining yet again.

The approach in was straight up a valley with Bow Fell growing on our right hand side and enormous wall of green and rock which we would have to summit before pushing on and over it to reach our summit. The path up zigzagged back and forth on itself crossing small gulleys, culverts and streams.and some points the path itself formed the bed of the stream. We made it over the top and dropped towards the tarn as we dipped down and climbed back up the track started to splay out becoming less obvious as people rambled over the open ground.

Things went ok even when we reached broad crag a moon scape of rocks and no other path the only thing that could actually guide us was the cairns built by others. The weather by this point had been driving rain for nearly two hours. At some point the rain and wind was driving so hard I could only see out of one eye. We managed to find the memorial and the trig point. looked at each othder bleakly and realised we had to get off and fast as possible. we turned and made our way back. Not far from the top the path split and unfortunately I took a wrong turning, the bad weather and the desire to drop down out of this the weather all culminated in us heading along the wrong path.
We realised that we had gone the wrong way the GPS had died. Darren turned it on one last time praying it was going to give us a known position. It did we had dropped down along below Esk Pike. We where just at Ore Gap. Luckily we had passed a trail heading due north that would connect path with our origonal trail and to help guide us Angle Tarn was sat at the bottom of it. We where on our way home.
Funnily enough, as we went along we passed people on the way up and on the way down for a few people we passed them twice on the way down, how confusing for them it must have been.